BERLIN, September 14. /TASS/. London’s recent reaction to an interview of Russia’s RT channel with two men suspected of poisoning Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia is illogical, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Friday.
A spokesman for UK Prime Minister Theresa May on Thursday described an interview of Skripal case suspects, Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, with Russia’s RT channel as an ‘insult to the public's intelligence.’
"It is hard for me giving assessments to recent steps taken on behalf of London," Lavrov told a news conference in Berlin after a meeting with Germany’s top diplomat Heiko Maas. "This is all illogical."
"The country, which brags about its law-obedience and poses itself as a model of a legal system, is acting completely beyond the legal frames and is trying to do what is detrimental and it is a ‘megaphone diplomacy,’" Lavrov said.
According to the Russian foreign minister, London identified Petrov and Boshirov as suspects in April.
"This is why we need to turn to the British side asking about this absurd method and why there are still no facts on the table," Lavrov said.
"Our proposal of putting into operation existing mechanisms between London and Moscow on the legal assistance in criminal cases is still in force," the minister said. "Since there is no response to our proposal, we have all grounds to believe that there had been no crime, which these ladies and gentlemen are trying to attribute to our citizens."
The spokesman for UK Prime Minister May said on Thursday in particular: "The lies and blatant fabrications in this interview given to a Russian state-sponsored TV station are an insult to the public's intelligence."
In an interview with Russia’s RT TV channel released on September 13, Petrov and Boshirov said they had visited Great Britain for tourist purposes. According to them, they are businessmen not linked with the GRU and have nothing to do with the Skripal case. The two men stressed they wanted the media and everyone else to leave them alone.
On September 5, British Prime Minister Theresa May informed the British parliament about the outcome of the investigation into the Salisbury incident, stating that two Russians, whom British intelligence services consider to be Main Intelligence Directorate agents, are suspected of the attempted murder of the Skripals.
Scotland Yard published a number of photos of the two men, who, according to investigators, had been travelling around the country with Russian passports under the names of Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov.
On March 4, former Russian intelligence officer and convicted British spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were allegedly poisoned with a nerve agent, according to British investigators. Later on, London stated that this agent had been developed in Russia and blamed Moscow for being behind the incident based on this assumption.
Moscow refuted all accusations, saying that neither the Soviet Union, nor Russia had any programs for developing this agent. Experts from the British chemical laboratory in Porton Down failed to identify the origin of the agent that poisoned the Skripals.